Are Multiple Personalities Always a Disorder?
vice.com
vice.com
From what I have read, multiple personality disorder is most common in very intelligent women who were both sexually and physically abused from an early age, over a long period of time. I was abused from an early age, over a number of years. When I began therapy in my twenties, I would dream of six sisters, each was an age at which I had been particularly traumatized. Over time, some of the dream sisters melded together and I dreamed of four sisters. I eventually dreamed of conceiving a child -- conceiving a new self.
I was in my late thirties when I stopped feeling fragmented, when I finally felt whole. I never had separate personalities, but I suspect the abuse I endured stopped short of producing MPD. I wasn't splintered to that degree.
I have two special needs sons. I always told them their traits had good points and bad points. I did not communicate to them that they were disordered. I believe it helped them deal constructively with being different and helped them not feel broken or stigmatized. So I have sympathy for the point of view that multiples are just different and not disordered, though I feel clearly that my sense of having various personas was rooted in trauma and I feel clear that healing my trauma is what made me feel whole and unfragmented. So I find the idea that there are people who are multiple who do not view it as a disorder intriguing.
Earlier today, I read five different sources on MPD/DID. The general consensus from authoritative sources is that the causes of MPD are unknown. There are theories (and oppositions to those theories) about developmental trauma. I didn't find any linkage to gender or intelligence. Gender and particularly intelligence would surprise me if they were confirmed traits that influenced DID/MPD. If you have an authoritative source that isn't under question, I'd appreciate if you can share it. It's always good to have your views challenged. See the following link for some of the controversy and general discussion. In this instance, Wikipedia summed up other sources I found quite well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder#...
However, at one time, I was Director of Community Life for The TAG Project (TAG = talented and gifted), so I can tell you with confidence that mental issues such as autism, ADHD, and OCD are so common among high IQ individuals that some folks refer to them as comorbidities. The higher the IQ, the more likely you are to see some issue of that sort. That is something you should be able to easily verify with a quick search. If you can't, I can suggest some sources. (I am on a tablet ATM. Providing links would be a pain.)
Some years ago, I was contacted by a woman who had been brutally raped in her teens. She had dissociated during the rape. She felt really bad about that and, over the years, mental health professionals and others had given her messages and attitudes that just reinforced her negative feeling. I told her that it only proved that something was done to her that was really terrible and, unable to physically escape, she did the only thing she could do to protect her mind. I suggested to her that fragmenting some piece of your mind puts it on ice so you have hope of retrieving it later. It isn't lost. You prevent it from being outright destroyed by what you are enduring. So I suspect it probably helps to have a high IQ so you can create complex internal structures if you are in a sufficiently hostile setting, and then the result can be multiple "faces" developing. If it goes on long enough, presumably they can become more distinct than the sense of personaes I experienced.
In the early teens of twenty-one, new techniques of effective psychological therapy began to transform Earth culture and politics. Therapied individuals, as a new mental rather than economic class, behaved differently. Beyond the expected reduction in extreme and destructive behaviors, the therapied proved more facile and adaptable, effectively more intelligent and therefore more skeptical. They evaluated political, philosophical, and religious claims according to their own standards of evidence. They were not “true believers.” Nevertheless, they worked with others – even the untherapied – easily and efficiently. The slogan of those who advocated therapy was, “A sane society is a polite society”.
After having read that, it clicked in my head, how the world could be different if everyone got some sort of mental therapy (since we all have issues, big and small), and the effect that might have on things like loans, job prospects, etc. If we all were more aware of our mental health, and it was ingrained in our society, it wouldn't be a matter of "it's a disorder or not", it would just be something everyone did because it's just healthier to do it than not.
I doubt that separate classes of citizens would emerge in Canada, the UK, or other socialized-healthcare countries though.
Amusingly, ADHD is probably the or one of the fastest treated disorders. If you are willing/able to take stimulants, you should see improvement in 30 minutes. Of course, ideally you use some of that new found willpower to start making good habits, which DOES take a while to show progress.
"Stephen Leeds, AKA “Legion,” is a man whose unique mental condition allows him to generate a multitude of personae: hallucinatory entities with a wide variety of personal characteristics and a vast array of highly specialized skills. As the story begins, Leeds and his “aspects” are drawn into the search for the missing Balubal Razon..." http://brandonsanderson.com/books/legion/legion/
To take it further do people with MPD have differing physical personas as well, say they have different diseases
On the other hand there's the whole issue with the accuracy of people self reporting on their own psychology.
And we should expect identity branching from individual to individual; even identical twins who may be practically the same can not occupy the same space at the same time, so there must be some divergence. But branching within an individual...How does that happen?
When it comes to analogies cognitive psychology and computer are no strangers: Perhaps its similar to dual-booting, virtualization, or just a multi-user system. If that human brain is capable of running multiple persons it may be subject to the same limits of resource sharing and allocation or just have ACLs which would explain branching.
We don't understand DID, MPD, or whatever we want to call it. It's unusual and there's no reason to believe our brains should develop in such a way. Not to sound de-humanizing but it needs to be studied, just like "normal" personalities need to be studied.
If people can live comfortable, healthy lives with multiple identities than I hope we can come to accept it, and sooner rather than later. But we also have to consider how it affects other people, for example another VICE article was posted to HN a while bask describing their perspective while a partner had a dissociative episode: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9144552
In any case, if consciousness is a result of physical processes that take place in the brain (as almost everyone with a scientific background assumes), there's no reason why the same process can't run twice and spawn two instances of consciousness. Benign duplication is a relatively common phenonemon in biology; there are people with six fingers, three kidneys, etc. who don't really feel any discomfort as a result.
His recent sequel, "Echopraxia", has an interesting extension of bicameralism as well.
Multiple personalities could make it easier to switch value systems; but probably wouldn't make it easier to integrate them.
Second: There is only one reality, the one we share. Claiming otherwise is absurd. Some people believe that obesity can be healthy too, and that's far from the truth. Just because you say something is so doesn't make it so. Having multiple personalities is not a normal thing, and if it begins to affect your life (by way of anxiety, depression, etc.) you need help. You can't mess around with this stuff. Mental disorders are serious.
That being said, it is also very true that to get anything done we have to agree upon those things that are common between our realities so that we can work together.
While it's true that we have to agree upon certain facets of reality to get anything done, faulty perception and cognition exists (and can in many cases be detected).
I tend to agree with striking, in that "There is only one reality, the one we share" - but this is not necessarily (nor probably) the one we perceive.
It's actually arguing againstthe popular notion that they're necessarily a disorder (or at least positing that as a possibility), so the common interpretation of the headline law actually supports their argument, rather than refutes it like is normally the case.
1) It does feel like “someone else” can take control of my mind and decision making at any moment. In my case, it is triggered by certain emotions. Someone who is not the “real” me - like the id wanting to break out. To explain it briefly, my emotional system is not mature (or is it?). When I feel fear or regret, I feel it 10x stronger than you do. Whether that is a defect of the mind, glands, or some kind of evolutionary thing, I don’t think that can be said for sure. I see no real research ever being done in this regard, unless mental health professionals, neurologists, and evolutionary scientists really start talking to each other seriously about all this.
2) In my life, I have been routinely misdiagnosed and have been refused help my many medical professionals, most likely out of fear of dealing with someone like me. The dogma, even amongst medical professionals, is to avoid people like me. The only real help and support I’ve gotten has come from online strangers and their families who are well read up on these things. Most in my family don’t even have the education required to begin to understand this issue, and that is unfortunate.
3) Hollywood portrays people with the characteristics of this disorder as villains, or good-turned-evil type antagonists. Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader is a good example. Try empathizing with someone like Dr. Jekyll and you’ll start to get an idea how taboo this really is in real life. And lest we forget what happens at the end of that story – Jekyll commits suicide to end Hyde’s reign of terror – and you start realizing why we choose to hide. This leads to very little research being done.
4) I have a small family, a nice home, and a great career – doing what I love (hacking). It was very hard to get here. I never finished school and have few close relationships, all constantly in flux. It is very hard sometimes to keep things in order in my mind and manage the severe anxiety it creates. Some of my "side effect" disorders include a diagnosis of OCD as well as the usual depressive and manic cycles (at non-bipolar levels).
5) I don’t take any medicine. I love what I do for a living and working on all twelve cylinders. Medication only allows me to fire on two cylinders. You don’t have to agree with this, but I need you to understand this choice.
6) I don’t actually feel any less “normal” than the rest of you. You wouldn’t notice me if we engaged in small talk. People who really know me often say I have a good heart, but can be very calculating and cruel at times. I can see what they mean. They tell me to try to “work on it” but I don’t think they really understand what they’re asking me to do. They’re asking me to get rid of a part of me. They’re asking me to murder Hyde.
Most of the time she was cheerful, funny, clever, generous, and fun to spend time with, but under stress her personality would do a 180° turn, and she would become self-centered, calculating, and paranoid. She would seize on any thought or scrap of evidence, however flimsy, to blame her distress on other people (her students, neighbors, strangers on the street, her family, me), and would maliciously lash out at people entirely out of proportion to their actions, which were often trivial mistakes or entirely unrelated to her.
I tried for a while to be supportive and understanding, but I was in far over my head. I felt like anything I said to her in her “nice” phase could be taken out of context, spun around, and used as a weapon, and to maintain a relationship with her would require continuous self-censorship, impossible amounts of empathy, and an iron skin for disregarding emotional attacks.
It was clear she was suffering and wasn’t getting the support she needed from family/friends/school/work/therapists, her childhood and former relationships had been traumatic/abusive, and in breaking things off I felt like a complete failure, under the theory that I might have been able to help if I were stronger. To be honest though, I’m not sure a person/role exists who could have given her the support she really needed at that time. I can only hope that the passage of time has helped her figure out some better coping mechanisms and less damaging ways of relating to people, but we haven’t spoken since, so I have no idea how she’s doing.
The experience left me an emotional wreck, and it took me several months to recover. I didn’t date anyone again for over a year afterward.
All of which is to say, I can well understand why people, even professional therapists or family members, might be unwilling to engage. It’s extremely unpleasant and stressful, with high risk, for mostly someone else’s benefit.
Many people don't want to admit they have a disorder, so it's no surprise that the community don't feel they belong in this category.
From the wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder
Most have "chaotic personal lives". It's classified as a 'disorder' only so we can help someone with these issues.
What's interesting for me is that quite a few people in IT that I have worked with have symptoms that are very Aspergers like. It can come down to an individual's interpretation as to whether or not their condition is a mental disorder. Most of these IT people that are Aspergers like would almost certainly reject the notion of them being Aspergers, even if you explained the behaviours.
The consensus is that we are all on the spectrum - it's just the degree that our symptoms are prevalent. For example, sleep deprivation can trigger similar symptoms, so can over-stimulation. For example, have someone yell in your ear for 5 minutes and you will exhibit some of the physical behaviours that autistic children do.